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Catastrophe or catastrophic comes from the Greek κατά (kata) = down; στροφή (strophē) = turning (Greek: καταστροφή). It may refer to the following: It may refer to the following:
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 24 December 2024. Event resulting in major damage, destruction or death For other uses, see Disaster (disambiguation). Ruins from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, one of the worst disasters in the history of the United States A disaster is an event that causes serious harm to people, buildings ...
A natural disaster is the highly harmful impact on a society or community following a natural hazard event. The term "disaster" itself is defined as follows: "Disasters are serious disruptions to the functioning of a community that exceed its capacity to cope using its own resources.
An environmental disaster or ecological disaster is defined as a catastrophic event regarding the natural environment that is due to human activity. [2] This point distinguishes environmental disasters from other disturbances such as natural disasters and intentional acts of war such as nuclear bombings .
"Apocalypse" has come to be used popularly as a synonym for catastrophe, but the Greek word apokálypsis, from which it is derived, means a revelation. [13] It has been defined by John J Collins as "a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both ...
A disaster hazard is an extreme geophysical event that is capable of causing a disaster. 'Extreme' in this case means a substantial variation in either the positive or the negative direction from the normal trend; flood disasters can result from exceptionally high precipitation and river discharge, and drought is caused by exceptionally low ...
Cyclones. Extratropical cyclone. European windstorms; Australian East Coast Low "Medicane", Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones Polar cyclone; Tropical cyclone, also called a hurricane, typhoon, or just "cyclone"
For the first portion of the list, see List of words having different meanings in American and British English (A–L). Asterisked (*) meanings, though found chiefly in the specified region, also have some currency in the other dialect; other definitions may be recognised by the other as Briticisms or Americanisms respectively.